Sorting Materials
Elementary School
Definition
Grouping materials according to shared properties such as texture, hardness, colour, or whether they float or sink. Sorting is an early science skill that helps learners observe carefully and recognise that materials can belong to more than one group.
Worked examples
A learner sorts a collection into "floats in water" (cork, plastic bottle cap, feather) and "sinks in water" (metal spoon, stone, marble).
Grouping by floating or sinking tests the property of density in a hands-on way.
The same materials are re-sorted by texture: "smooth" (marble, spoon, bottle cap) and "rough" (stone, cork, feather).
One material can belong to different groups depending on which property you sort by.
Common mistakes
- putting a material in only one group because it has one obvious property → recognizing that the same material can belong to multiple groups (e.g., smooth and sinks) Materials have many properties at once; sorting criteria change the groups.
- sorting only by colour and ignoring physical properties like hardness or texture → sorting by various properties — texture, hardness, transparency, magnetic attraction, etc. Colour is one property, but science sorting practices observation of many testable characteristics.
Where you'll use it next
Sorting materials builds observation skills you'll use when classifying substances in chemistry, identifying rocks and minerals in earth science, and grouping living things by shared traits in biology.
See also
Material PropertiesPhysical PropertiesObservation SkillsFamiliar MaterialsStates of MatterData Collection
Reviewed by Pat Cheng, M.Ed. — StudyPug Curriculum Lead · Last updated June 6, 2026